I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked for a response from Charlie, but there was none. I understood that distance was what we both needed right now. But even so, it still stung like abandonment.
I sighed and pushed the phone back into my pocket as a young girl came up to the counter and presented me with my drink. ‘Do you want some milk with that?’
‘No, thanks,’ I replied.
‘And, while you’re here, would you like to donate to our charity of the month?’
My change was still jangling in my pocket.
‘Sure,’ I said. She grinned and reached over to a plastic bucket, decorated in glitter and colourful lettering, which I’d somehow missed as I’d been standing there. There was even a string of battery-powered fairy lights wrapped around it to attract maximum attention. ‘What’s the cause?’ I asked.
Her grin widened as the opportunity to bombard me with details came. ‘Healthy Minds, have you heard of them? Me and my boyfriend are doing a charity bike ride to raise money for them.’
I frowned and tilted my head to the side as my brain slotted all of that information into place. ‘You’re not Audrey, are you?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said uncertainly. ‘How’d you know that?’
‘Nell?’ The supervisor stopped serving the young mother and son at the till, completely abandoning their order as he weaved his way out from behind the counter and stood in front of me with hopeful eyes. ‘I thought I recognised your voice when you ordered.’
‘No,’ I said in disbelief as a smile pulled my mouth up at the corners. ‘Jackson?’
He pulled me into a hug and squeezed me so tightly that I could scarcely breathe.
I couldn’t believe it.
How many times had I seen him, smiled at him, been inches away from him? And all that time I’d known him, without being aware of it. He’d always seemed perfectly content every time I’d seen him. Sometimes, people’s ability to hide their true feelings from the world even surprised me.
I guess I’d been playing into the exact same stereotypes that I always fought against whenever I thought of Jackson. I imagined him as a frightfully thin, very plain man who everyone would always refer to as a boy rather than the adult he was. But Jackson was nothing like my mental image of him. He was tall and broad, buff even, with big wide shoulders and sleeves of tattoos that snaked around toned forearms. His hair was longer than usual, not that that was saying much as it was usually shaved close to his scalp, but I guess that all of his personal choices were changing now that he had a girlfriend.
That had happened with me and Joel. He’d always wanted to keep his hair short but I liked it long, so he’d kept it that way for me. I felt the twinge in my chest that came every time I thought about him and I almost felt myself reach for my phone to call him. But he didn’t want to talk to me; he’d told me so himself and I needed to give him time to come around to wanting to speak to me again, if ever.
Jackson pulled away and began explaining to Audrey who I was. She seemed just as overjoyed as he did to finally put a face to the name and hugged me too, once Jackson had let me go.
There was something about this moment that felt like the wrapping up of another loose end. I’d been afraid to leave Healthy Minds because I was worried about Jackson, but now he was moving on and leaving me behind, as he very well should.
The other reason not to leave and pursue old dreams was Ned, but even he was moving on, not from work, but emotionally. The idea of Ned and Mum being together unnerved me, but if that was what made them both happy then who was I to hold them back?
My ties with Joel had been severed and I doubted that he’d ever want to talk to me again. If he needed to, I’d be there, but if he didn’t then that was fine too.
Even Charlie had moved on. I’d been so set on sticking around and not moving on for the wellbeing of other people, that I’d somehow fallen behind.
What if I had just been what Charlie had needed during that dark period of his life and what if I’d only needed him to finally move on from Joel? Maybe he didn’t need me anymore and maybe I didn’t need him. The idea made me feel like I was splitting in two, but I knew that I had to stop waiting around for life to kick me in another direction and tread the path myself. Everyone seemed happy and settled. Except me.
Maybe it was time to move on.
Chapter Thirty-One
One month later
Charlie
For such a tiny person, Kenna sure took up a lot of room. She always had done, sticking out her elbows or leaning at peculiar angles because she was wearing something too fitted that would stop her breathing if she sat like a regular person.
‘How’s Nell?’ she asked, as she absentmindedly twirled a ginger ringlet around her red-gel-tipped finger.
I looked down into the almost empty ice cream tub in my hand and scraped the spoon across the bottom, making patterns on the milky cardboard. ‘She was fine last I talked to her.’
‘And when was that?’ she asked.
‘A while ago,’ I replied.
I tossed my ice cream pot into the bin beside our bench and looked out at the pale, sunny sky over Clew Bay. Being here brought back the memory of when Nell found me, after I went AWOL at the memorial. How long ago that seemed now.
‘She wanted space and I need it too. So, that’s exactly what I’m givin’ her,’ I said.
‘It’s a shame that yer had to meet her when you did.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, feeling the
